


Wanderer

by Curupia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Introspection, M/M, No one understands Will Graham, POV Will Graham, could be read as either - Freeform, except Hannibal Lecter, obviously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 01:52:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19075069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curupia/pseuds/Curupia
Summary: Will’s mind likes to wander off.Hannibal is always there when he gets back.





	Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into the Hannibal fandom, so I hope you enjoy. If you’re into shadowhunters or teen wolf I have a few works in those fandoms as well. 
> 
> As always, I appreciate and adore comments and kudos.

He didn’t _mean_ to do it. He wasn’t _intentionally_ walking  out on the conversations; he wasn’t leaving in the middle of dinner, meeting,  _ class _ _,_ by  _choice._   It just, happened. A word, a phrase, some image or other would catch and he would be transported, like a fish nibbling on a lure - unaware then suddenly  _whoosh_ \- pulled entirely from its surroundings. 

Different people behaved differently to it. 

Alana would wait him out, but he could always see the concern she tried to hide once he came back. She didn’t always notice the moment he left - most people didn’t - and more often than not she fumbled in finding where he’d left off. It made things awkward and stilted and he felt guilty, like he let her down every time his mind wandered off on a new train and left her behind at the station to wait. 

Jack wouldn’t wait for him to get back. He demanded Will be present and accounted for at all times, unless he was “doing his thing” at a crime scene. Jack would give him time to wander if it seemed like it was getting him somewhere in a case, otherwise it was snapping fingers in front of his face, a loud and curt “Will!” in his ear, a not-so-gentle hand on the shoulder. It was always an abrupt reentry with Jack, one that made him feel dizzy and nausea and confused - well, more confused than normal. It took him a moment to come back, and every time the annoyed look on Jack’s face would make him want to curl up in a corner and die - an emotion that generally manifested itself in responding with frustrated bitchiness that he knew they both could see right through. 

Beverly seemed to think it was cute. Exasperating, but adorable in that way that Will was. He would come back to her rolling her eyes and shaking her head, dragging him along and refusing to repeat herself. He just had to catch up or be lost until something she said started to make sense again. He almost appreciated this reaction the most. If he’d had any siblings, those were the reactions he imagined they would have. 

The guys looked at him the same way almost everyone else did: like he should be the one whose brain was being picked apart, not whatever killer he was currently trying to get into the mind of. He scared them. And he annoyed them. And, to a lesser extent, he disgusted them. They would never say it in so many words, but they didn’t have to. He could feel it radiating off of them like heat from sweltering asphalt. 

So no, he didn’t  _choose_ for his mind to wander off at the drop of a hat, it’s just the way he was hardwired. 

_Incorrect._

_Faulty._

_Broken._

It’s no wonder, really, that the first time it happened around Hannibal, Will nearly worked himself up into a panic attack in the three second span it took to register that it had happened. It’s not like Hannibal didn’t already  _know_ Will was damaged. He’d seen Will fall apart more than anyone Will could remember, and he’d only known the man a short while. But this felt important. Almost monumental. In that short time, he’d been Will’s paddle, his lifeline. He had  _seen_ Will in a way he wasn’t sure anyone else ever had. And still he was there - offering Will a drink, dinner, company to stave off the terrors that haunted his waking moments, collaboration to work out the muddled mess inside his head. He was still there, and Will... Will had wandered off. 

It was those hands that had triggered it. Sitting across from Hannibal skillfully chopping vegetables for the evening’s dinner, he starts to wander. Hannibal’s hands were a strange mixture of delicate and strong, capable. Fingers long like a pianist or - more fittingly - a surgeon’s. Will wonders if they’re soft or calloused.  _Working in an ER meant scrubbing in multiple times a shift, using those sponges with tiny plastic bristles to scrub the top layer of dermis off to prevent as much contamination as possible before drying with rough sterilized towels and sliding into pair after pair of latex gloves. Maybe he had a latex allergy - perhaps it contributed in a small way to his decision to leave surgery behind. Medical technology has come far in a short amount of time, but it has yet to invent a latex alternative for surgical gloves. Examination gloves, sure. Nitrile, neoprene, polyvinyl chloride... but nothing quite matches up to the feel and precision of latex for operating. But surgical gloves were based off the concept of condoms, and condoms make use of latex alternatives that actually exceed the benefits of latex in many regards -_

Hannibal’s hands move from chopping up vegetables to making precise slices through the livers he has laid out on a separate cutting board and Will’s mind follows like a trail of light from a moving flame. 

_What must it feel like to be submerged in the viscera of another living thing? Will has touched dead bodies before, gutted fish with his bare hands, but never reached inside a living, breathing creature - to feel the warmth, the slippery slide of viscous fluids and organs moving at his will, at his mercy... how similar it must be to sex._

His own flushed embarrassment at the direction he’s wandered off in brings him back to the present where Hannibal is just finishing seasoning the precise cuts of organ and arranging them symmetrically in a pan on the stove. Will must startle upon his reemergence, because Hannibal looks over his shoulder at him, a minuscule quirk of the lips as he dries his hands -  _those damned hands_ \- on the edge of his apron. 

“Welcome back, Will. Did you have a pleasant journey?” 

From anyone else, this would have made him bristle, but from Hannibal, there was no sarcasm in the accented words, only simple and genuine curiosity. His face held none of Alana’s concern or Jack’s frustration. Even Beverly’s fond annoyance was nowhere to be found, though perhaps the fondness itself had seeped in somewhere around the edges. Will wonders if Hannibal knows it’s there, or if anyone but himself would even be able to parse it from his nearly neutral expression of openness. 

Will swallows thickly, his tongue tacky and thick-feeling. 

“It was...interesting. I’m not sure pleasant is the word I would use.” Though it seemed to have been making its way there rather quickly. 

“Do you wish to discuss it, or shall I enlighten you as to this history of the dish we are about to consume?” 

 

Will found it hard to believe that it might be that simple. That Hannibal would let him keep his “journey” to himself, but he would be proven wrong time and time again over the coming weeks. They would be together - in a session, having dinner, taking through a crime - and Will would wander off, down a corridor or around a ledge. Sometimes, miraculously, Hannibal would follow him, find him in a land not so close to where they’d begun, and lead him back to the path they’d been traveling down together. Other times, he would simply wait for Will to return, offering an ear or a distraction, but never demanding either. Will found himself increasingly choosing the former, much to his own surprise. 

No, he didn’t  _want_ to wander off. Less and less was he willing to voluntarily discard Hannibal’s company for anything less than a dead body. It wasn’t something he would ever consciously  _choose_ to do. But he despised himself less for it when Hannibal was there to welcome him back. He fet less like a flailing fish and more like a boomerang - traveling away at odd trajectories and often terrifying speeds, but hurtling right back into those hands, those delicate, capable hands. 

 


End file.
